Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
The movie I’m most looking forward to isn’t a movie at all—it’s the last episodes of Game of Thrones. If you don’t watch the show, you’re probably sick of hearing about it. But then again, you’re also probably living under a rock and proudly telling all the passing roly polys, “I don’t own a TV” or “That show is just the Cinemax version of Lord of the Rings.”
I’m sure I’m not the only fan who hasn’t been able to think about much else after the second episode of the final season. It was an all-time great episode—a classic quiet-before-the-storm episode, with little plot advancement but lots of great character moments. And it ended on a nail-biting cliffhanger, with this weekend’s extra-long episode slated to be a massive battle, in which most major characters are in mortal danger. This, of course, is a show that built its reputation killing off the characters nobody expected to die. Honestly, the most shocking thing HBO could do this next episode is not kill anyone.
I watched the first season not long after it aired in 2011. And then I read the George R. R. Martin books—on which the series is based—before the the second season. It’s the deepest, weirdest, most rewarding fictional mythology I’ve ever encountered—better than Lord of the Rings, Marvel Comics or the Bible.
As I’ve mentioned a few times, a family illness has kept me home a lot recently. Since we weren’t getting out, Margot and I decided to re-watch the run of the show. Noticed a bunch of strange things re-watching —like, for example, how much Joffrey, the sadistic child king of seasons 2 and 3, reminds me of the current occupant of the Oval Office.